Phillip Harold Lewis, 1922-2011

As a curator in the anthropology department at the Field Museum for four decades, Phillip Harold Lewis made several trips to the village of Lesu on the island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea.

There he did extensive fieldwork in the study of Melanesian culture and art and collected hundreds of items — including tribal masks, woven baskets and musical instruments — many of which are still on exhibit at the museum.

"Phil embodied the fieldwork ethic, embedding himself in another culture to fully study and understand it," said Patrick Ryan Williams, chairman of the anthropology department at the museum. "His exhibits were impressive and continue to serve as a legacy of his life's work."

Mr. Lewis, 89, previously of Hyde Park and Evanston, a former chairman of the anthropology department at the Field Museum, died Saturday, Dec. 10, at Mather Pavilion, a nursing facility in Evanston, of natural causes.

The longest serving curator at the Field Museum, Mr. Lewis during his 40-year tenure oversaw the installation of Pacific Hall, a permanent exhibit on Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian cultures.

"He was our only curator of primitive art from the Pacific Rim back then," Williams said.

In the early 1950s, Mr. Lewis set off on his first research expedition, flying in a propeller plane from Chicago to California, Hawaii to Fiji, and then Australia to New Ireland.

"They kept stopping to refuel," said his daughter Betty Lewis. "It was an extremely arduous journey."

Once there, Mr. Lewis was assigned simple living quarters with no running water or electricity, his daughter said.

"The outhouse had spiders the size of his hand and a fruit bat kept stealing his bananas," she said.

Mr. Lewis came to love the Melanesian people and their culture, making two more trips to New Ireland in the 1970s and '80s.

"It was a beautiful place with people who lived a very peaceful existence," his daughter said.

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Mr. Lewis was born and raised on the city's North Side and graduated from Lane Technical High School in 1940. He was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago for a short time before serving as a weather forecaster with the Army Air Forces in the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

Following his military discharge in 1945, Mr. Lewis attended the University of Chicago, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees, and later a doctorate in anthropology. It was there he met his wife of 54 years, Sally Rappaport, a fellow anthropology student. She died in 2003.

In 1952, Mr. Lewis began working as a curator at the Field Museum, serving as chairman of the anthropology department from 1975 to 1979. He retired in 1992, at age 70.

Other survivors include a son, David; another daughter, Emily Lewis Mantell; a sister, Judy Natkin; and two grandchildren.